Festi Jazz: the jazz world’s new must

For a seventh consecutive year, Festi Jazz Mont-Tremblant will be hosting the country’s biggest musicians; they’ll have the town swaying to the sound of their brasses, guitars, pianos, voices and basses. Seems like jazz has found a new home.

This seventh annual Festi Jazz Mont-Tremblant, scheduled for August 6 to 10, has a superb program that was unveiled on the terrace of the restaurant Pizza et cie during a jazz concert presented for the occasion. Yet again, the event will live up to the expectations of its founder and artistic director Luc Hamel: the quality of both artists and shows will be topnotch.

One hundred or so professional artists will give more than 40 free concerts in Mont-Tremblant’s downtown district, in the Place de la Gare in the Village district, and in ten or so venues around town. Jazz lovers will be able to hear the great jazz pianist Lorraine Desmarais, crooner Colin Hunter, and saxophonist François D’Amour, who will present a homage concert to Herbie Hancock’s Headhunters. The full program is available on jazzmttremblant.com.

If Luc Hamel has been able to bring together so much talent over the years, it’s partly because there’s a message making the rounds among musicians: “from now on, it’s in Mont-Tremblant that jazz is happening,” says Mr. Hamel. According to him, the 100 per cent jazz program of the festival, the ambience and the conditions go a long way to making Mont-Tremblant the new promised land of jazz.

“Musicians send me dozens of requests every year. Obviously, we have to select the best known, but we have a choice. The hardest thing for us is being limited in terms of the number of concerts,” Luc admits.

“[…]one of the most pleasant events of the Québec summer festival season,” writes Daniel Lemay of newspaper La Presse, in an article called “Place au jazz laurentien” (“Make way for Laurentians’ jazz”). The future looks promising for this 100 per cent jazz festival, for which almost half of the festival goers last year came from out of town. It was a bonanza for Laurentian lodging facilities.